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A PROVENCE 
ROSE 


OUIDA^ 


COSY CORNER 
SERIES 




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A PROVENCE ROSE. 












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“ Cosy Corner Series 


A PROVENCE ROSE 

BY 


LOUISA DE LA RAME 
(“OUIDA”) 


ILLUSTRATED 



BOSTON 

JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY 
1894 





TZ s 



Copyright, 1893 
BY 

Joseph Knight Company 




“You Painted This, M. Rene Claude?” Frontispiece. 

“A Young Girl had Found and Rescued Me” . 7 

“In a very Narrow Street” 13 

“ He was a Painter ” 22 

“One Night . . . Lili Came to my Side by the 

Open Lattice” 28 

“She Fell on her Knees before it” . . 39 

Tailpiece, Part 1 42 

Headpiece, Part II 43 

Tailpiece, Part II 75 



A PROVENCE ROSE. 


PART FIRST. 


I WAS a Provence rose. 

A little slender rose, with leaves of shining 
green and blossoms of purest white, — a little 
fragile thing, but fair, they said, growing in the 
casement in a chamber in a street. 

I remember my birth-country well. A great 
wild garden, where roses grew together by mill- 
ions and tens of millions, all tossing our bright 
heads in the light of a southern sun on the 
edge of an old, old city — old as Rome — 
whose ruins were clothed with the wild fig-tree 
and the scarlet blossom of the climbing creep- 
ers growing tall and free in our glad air of 
France. 

I remember how the ruined aqueduct went 
like a dark shadow straight across the plains ; 
how the green and golden lizards crept in and 
out and about amongst the grasses ; how the 
cicala sang her song in the moist, sultry eves ; 


2 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


how the women from the wells came trooping 
by, stately as monarchs, with their water-jars 
upon their heads ; how the hot hush of the 
burning noons would fall, and all things droop 
and sleep except ourselves ; how swift amongst 
us would dart the little blue-winged birds, and 
hide their heads in our white breasts and drink 
from our hearts the dew, and then hover above 
us in their gratitude, with sweet, faint music of 
their wings, till sunset came. 

I remember — But what is the use? I am 
only a rose ; a thing born for a day, to bloom 
and be gathered, and die. So you say: you 
must know. God gave you all created things 
for your pleasure and use. So you say. 

There my birth was ; there I lived — in the 
wide south, with its strong, quivering light, its 
radiant skies, its purple plains, its fruits of 
gourd and vine. I was young; I was happy; 
I lived : it was enough. 

One day a rough hand tore me from my 
parent stem and took me, bleeding and droop- 
ing, from my birthplace, with a thousand other 
captives of my kind. They bound a score of 
us up together, and made us a cruel substitute 
for our cool, glad garden-home with poor 
leaves, all wet from their own tears, and mosses 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


3 


torn as we were from their birth-nests under 
the great cedars that rose against the radiant 
native skies. 

Then we were shut in darkness for I know 
not how long a space ; and when we saw the 
light of day again we were lying with our dear 
dead friends, the leaves, with many flowers of 
various kinds, and foliage and ferns and shrubs 
and creeping plants, in a place quite strange 
to us, — a place filled with other roses and with 
all things that bloom and bear in the rich days 
of midsummer, — a place which I heard them 
call the market of the Madeleine. And when 
I heard that name I knew that I was in Paris. 

For many a time, when the dread hand of 
the reaper had descended upon us, and we had 
beheld our fairest and most fragrant relatives 
borne away from us to death, a shiver that was 
not of the wind had run through all our boughs 
and blossoms, and all the roses had murmured 
in sadness and in terror, “ Better the worm or 
the drought, the blight or the fly, the whirl- 
wind that scatters us as chaff, or the waterspout 
that levels our proudest with the earth — better 
any of these than the long-lingering death by 
famine and faintness and thirst that awaits 
every flower which goes to the Madeleine.” 


4 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


It was an honor, no doubt, to be so chosen. 
A rose was the purest, the sweetest, the haught- 
iest of all her sisterhood ere she went thither. 
But, though honor is well no doubt, yet it 
surely is better to blow free in the breeze and 
to live one’s life out, and to be, if forgotten by 
glory, yet also forgotten by pain. Nay, yet : 
I have known a rose, even a rose who had but 
one little short life of a summer day to live 
through and to lose, perish glad and trium- 
phant in its prime because it died on a woman’s 
breast and of a woman’s kiss. You see there 
are roses as weak as men are. 

I awoke, I say, from my misery and my long 
night of travel, with my kindred beside me in 
exile, on a flower-stall of the Madeleine. 

It was noon — the pretty place was full of 
people : it was June, and the day was brilliant. 
A woman of Picardy sat with us on the board 
before her, — a woman with blue eyes and ear- 
rings of silver, who bound us together in fifties 
and hundreds into those sad gatherings of our 
pale ghosts which in your human language you 
have called “ bouquets.” The loveliest and 
greatest amongst us suffered decapitation, as 
your Marie Stuarts and Marie Antoinettes did, 
and died at once to have their beautiful, bright 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


5 


heads impaled — a thing of death, a mere 
mockery of a flower — on slender spears of 
wire. I, a little white and fragile thing, and 
very young, was in no way eminent enough 
amongst my kind to find that martyrdom which 
as surely awaits the loveliest of our roses as it 
awaits the highest fame of your humanity. 

I was bound up amongst a score of others 
with ropes of gardener’s bass to chain me 
amidst my fellow-prisoners, and handed over 
by my jailer with the silver ear-rings to a youth 
who paid for us with a piece of gold — whether 
of great or little value I know not now. None 
of my own roses were with me : all were stran- 
gers. You never think, of course, that a little 
rose can care for its birthplace or its kindred ; 
but you err. 

O fool ! Shall we not care for one another? 
— we who have so divine a life in common, 
who together sleep beneath the stars, and to- 
gether sport in the summer wind, and together 
listen to the daybreak singing of the birds, 
whilst the world is dark and deaf in slumber — 
we who know that we are all of heaven that God, 
when He called away His angels, bade them 
leave on the sin-stained, weary, sickly earth to 
now and then make man remember Him ! 


6 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


You err. We love one another well ; and it 
we may not live in union, we crave at least 
in union to droop and die. It is seldom that 
we have this boon. Wild flowers can live and 
die together ; so can the poor amongst you : 
but we of the cultivated garden needs must 
part and die alone. 

All the captives with me were strangers . 
haughty, scentless pelargoniums; gardenias, 
arrogant even in their woe; a knot of little, 
humble forget-me-nots, ashamed in the grand 
company of patrician prisoners ; a stephanalis, 
virginal and pure, whose dying breath was 
peace and sweetness ; and many sprays of myr- 
tle born in Rome, whose classic leaves wailed 
Tasso’s lamentation as they went. 

I must have been more loosely fettered than 
the rest w r ere, for in the rough, swift motion of 
the youth who bore us my bonds gave way and 
I fell through the silver transparency of our 
prison-house, and dropped stunned upon the 
stone pavement of a street. 

There I lay long, half senseless, praying, so 
far as I had consciousness, that some pitying 
wind would rise and waft me on his wings away 
to some shadow, some rest, some fresh, cool 
place of silence. 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 7 

I was tortured with thirst ; I was choked with 
Just ; I was parched with heat. 

The sky was as brass, the stones as red-hot 
metal ; the sun scorched 
like flame on the glare of 
the staring walls ; the 
heavy feet of the hurrying 
crowd tramped past me 
black and ponderous; 
with every step I thought 
my death would come 
under the crushing weight 
of those clanging heels. 

It was five seconds, 
five hours — which I know 
not. The torture was too 
horrible to be measured 
by time. I must have 
been already dead, or at 
the very gasp of death, 
when a cool, soft touch 
was laid on me; I was 
gently lifted, raised to 
tender lips, and fanned 
with a gentle, cooling breath, — breath from the 
lips that had kissed me. 

A young girl had found and rescued me, — 



8 


A TROVENCE ROSE. 


a girl of the people, poor enough to deem a 
trampled flower a treasure-trove. 

She carried me very gently, carefully veiling 
me from sun and dust as we went; and when I 
recovered perception I was floating in a porce- 
lain bath on the surface of cool, fresh water, 
from which I drank eagerly as soon as my sickly 
sense of faintness passed away. 

My bath stood on the lattice-sill of a small 
chamber ; it was, I knew afterward, but a white 
pan of common earthenware, such as you buy 
for two sous and put in your birdcages. But 
no bath of ivory and pearl and silver was ever 
more refreshing to imperial or patrician limbs 
than was that little clean and snowy pattypan 
to me. 

Under its reviving influences I became able 
to lift my head and raise my leaves and spread 
myself to the sunlight, and look round me. 
The chamber was in the roof, high above the 
traffic of the passage-way beneath ; it was very 
poor, very simple, furnished with few and homely 
things. True, to all our nation of flowers it 
matters little, when we are borne into captivity, 
whether the prison-house which receives us be 
palace or garret. Not to us can it signify whether 
we perish in Sevres vase of royal blue, or in 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


9 


kitchen pipkin of brown ware. Your lordliest 
halls can seem but dark, pent, noisome dungeons 
to creatures born to live on the wide plain, by 
the sunlit meadow, in the hedgerow, or the forest, 
or the green, leafy garden-way ; tossing always 
in the joyous winds, and looking always upward 
to the open sky. 

But it is of little use to dwell on this. You 
think that flowers, like animals, were only created 
to be used and abused by you, and that we, 
like your horse and dog, should be grateful 
when you honor us by slaughter or starvation 
at your hands. To be brief, this room was 
very humble, a mere attic, with one smaller still 
opening from it; but I scarcely thought of its 
size or aspect. I looked at nothing but the 
woman who had saved me. She was quite 
young ; not very beautiful, perhaps, except for 
wonderful soft azure eyes, and a mouth smiling 
and glad, with lovely curves to the lips, and hair 
dark as a raven’s wing, which was braided and 
bound close to her head. She was clad very 
poorly, yet with an exquisite neatness and even 
grace ; for she was of the people no doubt, but of 
the people of France. Her voice was very me- 
lodious; she had a silver cross on her bosom; 
and, though her face was pale, it had health. 


10 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


She was my friend, I felt sure. Yes, even 
when she held me and pierced me with steel and 
murmured over me, “ They say roses are so 
hard to rear so, and you are such a little thing ; 
but do grow to a tree and live with me. Surely, 
you can if you try.” 

She had wounded me sharply and thrust me 
into a tomb of baked red clay filled with black 
and heavy mould. But I knew that I was 
pierced to the heart that I might — though only 
a little offshoot gathered to die in a day — strike 
root of my own and be strong, and carry a 
crown of fresh blossoms. For she but dealt 
with me as your world deals with you, when 
your heart aches and your brain burns, and 
Fate stabs you, and says in your ear, “ O fool ! 
to be great you must suffer.” You to your fate 
are thankless, being human ; but I, a rose, was 
not. 

I tried to feel not utterly wretched in that 
little, dull clay cell ; I tried to forget my sweet, 
glad southern birthplace, and not to sicken and 
swoon in the noxious gases of the city air. I 
did my best not to shudder in the vapor of the 
stove, and not to grow pale in the clammy heats 
of the street, and not to die of useless lamenta- 
tion for all that I had lost — for the noble tawny 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


I 


sunsets, and the sapphire blue skies, and the 
winds all fragrant with the almond-tree flowers, 
and the sunlight in which the yellow orioles 
flashed like -gold. 

I did my best to be content and show my 
gratitude all through a parching autumn and 
a hateful winter ; and with the spring a wander- 
ing wind came and wooed me with low, amorous 
whispers — came from the south, he said; and 
I learned that even in exile in an attic window 
love may find us out and make for us a country 
and a home. 

So I lived and grew and was happy there 
against the small, dim garret panes, and my 
lover from the south came, still faithful, year by 
year ; and all the voices round me said that I was 
fair — pale indeed, and fragile of strength, as a 
creature torn from its own land and all its friends 
must be, but contented and glad, and grateful 
to the God who made me, because I had not 
lived in vain, but often saw sad eyes, half 
blinded with toil and tears, smile at me when 
they had no other cause for smiles. 

“ It is bitter to be mewed in a city,” said 
once to me an old, old vine who had been 
thrust into the stones below and had climbed 
the house wall, Heaven knew how, and had lived 


2 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


for half a century jammed between buildings, 
catching a gleam of sunshine on his dusty 
leaves once perhaps in a whole summer. “It 
is bitter for us. I would rather have had the 
axe at my root and been burned. But perhaps 
without us the poorest of people would never 
remember the look of the fields. When they 
see a green leaf they laugh a little, and then 
weep — some of them. We, the trees and the 
flowers, live in the cities as those souls amongst 
them whom they call poets live in the world, — 
exiled from heaven that by them the world may 
now and then bethink itself of God.” 

And I believe that the vine spoke truly. 
Surely, he who plants a green tree in a city way 
plants a thought of God in many a human heart 
arid with the dust of travail and clogged with 
the greeds of gold. So, with my lover the 
wind and my neighbor the vine, I was content 
and patient, and gave many hours of pleasure 
to many hard lives, and brought forth many a 
blossom of sweetness in that little nook under 
the roof. 

Had my brothers and sisters done better, I 
wonder, living in gilded balconies or dying in 
jewelled hands? 

I cannot say : I can only tell of myself. 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


3 


The attic in which 
I found it my fate to 
dwell was very high 
in the air, set in one 
of the peaked roofs 
of the quarter of the 
Luxembourg, in a 
very narrow street, 
populous, and full of 
noise, in which people 
of all classes, except 
the rich, were to be 
found — in a medley 
of artists, students, 
fruit-sellers, workers 
in bronze and ivory, 
seamstresses, obscure 
actresses, and all the 
creators, male and 
female, of the thou- 
sand and one airy arts 
of elegant nothing- 
ness which a world 
of pleasure demands 
as imperatively as a 
world of labor de- 
mands its bread. 




I 



14 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


It would have been a street horrible and hid- 
eous in any city save Rome or Paris : in Rome 
it would have been saved by color and antiq- 
uity; in Paris it was saved by color and 
grace. Just a flash of a bright drapery, just 
a gleam of a gay hue, just some tender pink 
head of a hydrangea, just some quaint curl of 
some gilded woodwork, just the green glimmer 
of my friend the vine, just the snowy sparkle 
of his neighbor the waterspout, — just these, so 
little and yet so much, made the crooked pas- 
sage a bearable home, and gave it a kinship 
with the glimpse of the blue sky above its pent 
roofs. 

O wise and true wisdom ! to redeem poverty 
with the charms of outline and of color, with the 
green bough and the song of running water, 
and the artistic harmony which is as possible to 
the rough-hewn pine-wood as in the polished 
ebony. “It is of no use!” you cry. O fools! 
Which gives you perfume — we, the roses, 
whose rich hues and matchless grace no human 
artist can imitate, or the rose-tremiere, which 
mocks us, standing stiff and gaudy and scentless 
and erect? Grace and pure color and cleanli- 
ness are the divinities that redeem the foulness 
and the ignorance and the slavery of your 


A PROVENCE ROSE. I 5 

crushed, coarse lives when you have sight 
enough to see that they are divine. 

In my little attic, in whose window I have 
passed my life, they were known gods and hon- 
ored ; so that, despite the stovepipe, and the 
poverty, and the little ill-smelling candle, and 
the close staircase without, with the rancid oil in 
its lamps and its fetid faint odors, and the ref- 
use, and the gutters, and the gas in the street 
below, it w r as possible for me, though a rose of 
Provence and a rose of the open air freeborn, 
to draw my breath in it and to bear my blos- 
soms, and to smile when my lover the wind 
roused me from sleep with each spring, and 
said in my ear, “ Arise ! for a new year is 
come.” Now, to greet a new year with a smile, 
and not a sigh, one must be tranquil, at least, 
if not happy. 

Well, I and the lattice, and a few homely 
plants of saxafrage and musk and balsam who 
bloomed there with me, and a canary who hung 
in a cage amongst us, and a rustic creeper who 
clung to a few strands of strained string and 
climbed to the roof and there talked all day to 
the pigeons — we all belonged to the girl with 
the candid, sweet eyes, and by name she was 
called Lili Kerrouel, and for her bread she 


1 6 A PROVENCE ROSE. 

gilded and colored those little cheap boxes for 
sweetmeats that they sell in the wooden booths 
at the fairs on the boulevards, while the mirli- 
tons whirl in their giddy go-rounds and the 
merry horns of the charlatans challenge the 
populace. She was a girl of the people : she 
could read, but I doubt if she could write. She 
had been born of peasant parents in a Breton 
hamlet, and they had come to Paris to seek 
work, and had found it for a while and pros- 
pered, and then had fallen sick and lost it, 
and struggled for a while, and then died, run- 
ning the common course of so many lives 
amongst you. They had left Lili alone at six- 
teen, or rather worse than alone — with an old 
grandam, deaf and quite blind, who could do 
nothing for her own support, but sat all day in 
a wicker chair by the lattice or the stove, ac- 
cording as the season was hot or cold, and 
mumbled a little inarticulately over her worn 
wooden beads. 

Her employers allowed Lili to bring these 
boxes to decorate at home, and she painted at 
them almost from dawn to night. She swept, 
she washed, she stewed, she fried, she dusted ; 
she did all the housework of her two little 
rooms ; she tended the old woman in all ways ; 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


1 7 


and she did all these things with such cleanliness 
and deftness that the attics were wholesome as 
a palace ; and though her pay was very small, 
she yet found means and time to have her linen 
spotless and make her pots and pans shine like 
silver and gold, and to give a grace to all the 
place, with the song of a happy bird and the 
fragrance of flowers that blossomed their best 
and their sweetest for her sake, when they would 
fain have withered to the root and died in their 
vain longing for the pure breath of the fields and 
the cool of a green woodland world. 

It was a little, simple, hard life, no doubt, — 
a life one would have said scarce worth all the 
trouble it took to get bread enough to keep it 
going, — a hard life, coloring always the same 
eternal little prints all day long, no matter how 
sweet the summer day might be, or how hot 
the tired eyes. 

A hard life, with all the wondrous, glorious, 
wasteful, splendid life of the beautiful city 
around it in so terrible a contrast; with the roll 
of the carriages day and night on the stones 
beneath, and the pattering of the innumerable 
feet below, all hurrying to some pleasure, and 
every moment some burst of music or some 
chime of bells or some ripple of laughter on 


1 8 A PROVENCE ROSE. 

the air. A hard life, sitting one’s self in a little 
dusky garret in the roof, and straining one’s 
sight for two sous an hour, and listening to an 
old woman’s childish mutterings and reproaches, 
and having always to shake the head in refusal 
of the neighbors’ invitations to a day in the 
woods or a sail on the river. A hard life, no 
doubt, when one is young and a woman, and 
has soft, shining eyes and a red, curling mouth. 

And yet Lili was content. 

Content, because she was a French girl; be- 
cause she had always been poor, and thought 
two sous an hour riches; because she loved 
the helpless old creature whose senses had all 
died while her body lived on ; because she was 
an artist at heart, and saw beautiful things 
round her even when she scoured her brasses 
and washed down her bare floor. 

Content, because with it all she managed to 
gather a certain “sweetness and light” into her 
youth of toil ; and when she could give herself 
a few hours’ holiday, and could go beyond the 
barriers, and roam a little in the wooded places, 
and come home with a knot of primroses or a 
plume of lilac in her hands, she was glad and 
grateful as though she had been given gold and 
gems. 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


9 


Ah ! In the lives of you who have wealth 
and leisure we, the flowers, are but one thing 
among many : we have a thousand rivals in 
your porcelains, your jewels, your luxuries, 
your intaglios, your mosaics, all your treasures 
of art, all your baubles of fancy. But in the 
lives of the poor we are alone : we are all the 
art, all the treasure, all the grace, all the beauty 
of outline, all the purity of hue, that they pos- 
sess : often we are all their innocence and all 
their religion too. 

Why do you not set yourselves to make us 
imre abundant in those joyless homes, in those 
sunless windows? 

Now this street of hers was very narrow: it 
was full of old houses, that nodded their heads 
close together as they talked, like your old 
crones over their fireside gossip. 

I could, from my place in the window, see 
right into the opposite garret window. It had 
nothing of my nation in it, save a poor colorless 
stone-wort, who got a dismal living in the gutter 
of the roof, yet who too, in his humble way, 
did good and had his friends, and paid the sun 
and the dew for calling him into being. For 
on that rainpipe the little dusty, thirsty spar- 
rows would rest and bathe and plume them- 


20 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


selves, and bury their beaks in the pale stone- 
crop, and twitter with one another joyfully, and 
make believe that they were in some green and 
amber meadow in the country in the cowslip 
time. 

I did not care much for the stone-crop or the 
sparrows ; but in the third summer of my cap- 
tivity there with Lili the garret casement oppo- 
site stood always open, as ours did, and I could 
watch its tenant night and day as I chose. 

He had an interest for me. 

He was handsome, and about thirty years 
old ; with a sad and noble face, and dark eyes 
full of dreams, and cheeks terribly hollow, and 
clothes terribly threadbare. 

He thought no eyes were on him when my 
lattice looked dark, for his garret, like ours, 
was so high that no glance from the street ever 
went to it. Indeed, when does a crowd ever 
pause to look at a garret, unless by chance a 
man have hanged himself out of its window? 
That in thousands of garrets men may be dying 
by inches for lack of bread, lack of hope, lack 
of justice, is not enough to draw any eyes up- 
ward to them from the pavement. 

He thought himself unseen, and I watched 
him many a long hour of the summer night 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


21 


when I sighed at my square open pane in the 
hot, sulphurous mists of the street, and tried to 
see the stars and could not. For, between me 
and the one small breadth of sky which alone 
the innumerable roofs left visible, a vintner had 
hung out a huge gilded imperial crown as 
a sign on his roof-tree ; and the crown, with its 
sham gold turning black in the shadow, hung 
between me and the planets. 

I knew that there must be many human souls 
in a like plight with myself, with the light of 
heaven blocked from them by a gilded tyranny ; 
and yet I sighed and sighed and sighed, think- 
ing of the white, pure stars of Provence throbb- 
ing in her violet skies. 

A rose is hardly wiser than a poet, you see ; 
neither rose nor poet will be comforted, and be 
content to dwell in darkness because a crown 
of tinsel swings on high. 

Well, not seeing the stars as I strove to do, 
I took refuge in sorrow for my neighbor. It 
is well for your poet when he turns to a like 
resource. Too often I hear he takes, instead, 
to the wine-cellar which yawns under the crown 
that he curses. 

My neighbor, I soon saw, was poorer even 
than we were. He was a painter, and he painted 


22 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


beautiful things. But his canvases and the nec- 
essaries of his art were nearly all that his empty 


fL 



attic had in it ; and when, after working many 
hours with a wretched glimmer of oil, he would 




A PROVENCE ROSE. 


23 


come to his lattice and lean out, and try, as I 
had tried, to see the stars, and fail, as I had 
failed, I saw that he was haggard, pallid, and 
weary unto death with two dire diseases, — hun- 
ger and ambition. 

He could not see the stars because of the 
crown, but in time, in those long midsummer 
nights, he came to see a little glowworm amongst 
my blossoms, which in a manner, perhaps, did 
nearly as well. 

He came to notice* Lili at her work. Often 
she had to sit up half the night to get enough 
coloring done to make up the due amount of 
labor; and she sat at her little deal table, with 
her little feeble lamp, with her beautiful hair 
coiled up in a great knot and her pretty head 
drooping so wearily — as we do in the long 
days of drought — but never once looking off, 
nor giving way to rebellion or fatigue, though 
from the whole city without there came one 
ceaseless sound, like the sound of an endless 
sea; which truly it was — the sea of pleasure. 

Not for want of coaxings, not for want of 
tempters, various and subtle, and dangers often 
and perilously sweet, did Lili sit there in her 
solitude earning two sous an hour with strain- 
ing sight and aching nerves that the old 


24 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


paralytic creature within might have bed and 
board without alms. Lili had been sore beset 
in a thousand ways, for she was very fair to 
see ; but she was proud and she was innocent, 
and she kept her courage and her honor; yea, 
though you smile — though she dwelt under 
an attic roof, and that roof a roof of Paris. 

My neighbor, in the old gabled window over 
the way, leaning above his stone-wort, saw her 
one night thus at work by her lamp, with the 
silver ear-rings, that were her sole heirloom and 
her sole wealth, drooped against the soft hues 
and curves of her graceful throat. 

And when he had looked once, he looked 
every night, and found her there ; and I, who 
could see straight into his chamber, saw that he 
went and made a picture of it all — of me, and 
the bird in the cage, and the little old dusky 
lamp, and Lili with her silver ear-rings and her 
pretty, drooping head. 

Every day he worked at the picture, and 
every night he put his light out and came and 
sat in the dark square of his lattice, and gazed 
across the street through my leaves and my 
blossoms at my mistress. Lili knew nothing of 
this watch which he kept on her ; she had put 
up a little blind of white network, and she 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


25 


fancied that it kept out every eye when it was 
up ; and often she took even that away, because 
she had not the heart to deprive me of the few 
faint breezes which the sultry weather gave us. 

She never saw him in his dark hole in the 
old gable there, and I never betrayed him — 
not I. Roses have been the flowers of silence 
ever since the world began. Are we not the 
flowers of love? 

“Who is he?” I asked of my gossip the vine. 
The vine had lived fifty years in the street, and 
knew the stories and sorrows of all the human 
bees in the hive. 

“ He is called Rene Claude,” said the vine. 
“ He is a man of genius. He is very poor.” 

“ You use synonyms,” murmured the old 
balsam, who heard. 

“ He is an artist,” the vine continued. “He 
is young. He comes from the south. His 
people are guides in the Pyrenees. He is a 
dreamer of dreams. He has taught himself 
many things. He has eloquence too. There 
is a little club at the back of the house which 
I climb over. I throw a tendril or two in 
at the crevices and listen. The shutters are 
closed. It is forbidden by law for men to 
meet so. There Rene speaks by the hour, 


2 6 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


superbly. Such a rush of words, such a glance, 
such a voice, like the roll of musketry in anger, 
like the sigh of music in sadness ! Though 
I am old, it makes the little sap there is left in 
me thrill and grow warm. He paints beautiful 
things too ; so the two swallows say who build 
under his eaves ; but I suppose it is not of 
much use : no one believes in him, and he al- 
most starves. He is young yet, and feels the 
strength in him, and still strives to do great 
things for the world that does not care a jot 
whether he lives or dies. He will go on so a 
little longer. Then he will end like me. I used 
to try and bring forth the best grapes I could, 
though they had shut me away from any sun to 
ripen them and any dews to cleanse the dust 
from them. But no one cared. No one gave 
me a drop of water to still my thirst, nor pushed 
away a brick to give me a ray more of light. 
So I ceased to try and produce for their good ; 
and I only took just so much trouble as would 
keep life in me myself. It will be the same 
with this man.” 

I, being young and a rose, the flower loved 
of the poets, thought the vine was a cynic, as 
many of you human creatures grow to be in the 
years of your age when the leaves of your life 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


2 ; 


fall sere. I watched Rene long and often. He 
was handsome, he suffered much ; and when 
the night was far spent he would come to his 
hole in the gable and gaze with tender, dream- 
ing eyes past my pale foliage to the face of 
Lili. I grew to care for him, and I disbelieved 
the prophecy of the vine ; and I promised my- 
self that one summer or another, near or far, 
the swallows, when they came from the tawny 
African world to build in the eaves of the city, 
would find their old friend flown and living no 
more in a garret, but in some art-palace where 
men knew his fame. 

So I dreamed — I, a little white rose, exiled 
in the passage of a city, seeing the pale moon- 
light reflected on the gray walls and the dark 
windows, and trying to cheat myself by a thou- 
sand fancies into the faith that I once more 
blossomed in the old, sweet, leafy garden-ways 
in Provence. 

One night — the hottest night of the year — 
Lili came to my side by the open lattice. It 
was very late ; her work was done for the night. 
She stood a moment, with her lips rested softly 
on me, looking down on the pavement that 
glistened like silver in the sleeping rays of the 


moon. 











A PROVENCE ROSE. 


29 


For the first time she saw the painter Rene 
watching her from his niche in the gable, with 
eyes that glowed and yet were dim. 

I think women foresee with certain prescience 
when they will be loved. She drew the lattice 
quickly to, and blew the lamp out : she kissed 
me in the darkness. Because her heart was 
glad or sorry? Both, perhaps. 

Love makes one selfish. For the first time 
she left my lattice closed all through the op- 
pressive hours until daybreak. 

“Whenever a woman sees anything out of 
her window that makes her eager to look again, 
she always shuts the shutter. Why, I wonder? ” 
said the balsam to me. 

“That she may peep unsuspected through 
a chink,” said the vine round the corner, who 
could overhear. 

It was profane of the vine, and in regard to 
Lili untrue. She did not know very well, I 
dare say, why she withdrew herself on that sud- 
den impulse, as the pimpernel shuts itself up 
at the touch of a raindrop. 

But she did not stay to look through a crev- 
ice ; she went straight to her little narrow bed, 
and told her beads and prayed, and slept till the 


30 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


cock crew in a stable near and the summer day- 
break came. 

She might have been in a chamber all mirror 
and velvet and azure and gold in any one of the 
ten thousand places of pleasure, and been lean- 
ing over gilded balconies under the lime leaves, 
tossing up little paper balloons in the air for 
gay wagers of love and wine and jewels. Pleas- 
ure had asked her more than once to come 
down from her attic and go with its crowds ; 
for she was fair of feature and lithe of limb, 
though only a work-girl of Paris. And she 
would not, but slept here under the eaves, as 
the swallows did. 

“We have not seen enough, little rose, you 
and I,” she would say to me with a smile and a 
sigh. “ But it is better to be a little pale, and 
live a little in the dark, and be a little cramped 
in a garret window, than to live grand in the 
sun for a moment, and the next to be tossed 
away in a gutter. And one can be so happy 
anyhow — almost anyhow ! — when one is 
young. If I could only see a very little piece 
more of the sky, and get every Sunday out to 
the dear woods, and live one floor lower, so 
that the winters were not quite so cold and the 
summers not quite so hot, and find a little more 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


31 


time to go to mass in the cathedral, and be able 
to buy a pretty blue-and-white home of por- 
celain for you, I should ask nothing more of the 
blessed Mary — nothing more upon earth.” 

She had had the same simple bead-roll of in- 
nocent wishes ever since the first hour that she 
had raised me from the dust of the street ; and 
it would, I doubt not, have remained her only 
one all the years of her life, till she should have 
glided down into a serene and cheerful old age 
of poverty and labor under that very same roof, 
without the blessed Mary ever deigning to 
harken or answer. Would have done so if the 
painter Rene could have seen the stars, and 
so had not been driven to look instead at the 
glow-worm through my leaves. 

But after that night on which she shut to the 
lattice so suddenly, I think the bead-roll length- 
ened • — lengthened, though for some time the 
addition to it was written on her heart in a 
mystical language which she did not try to 
translate even to herself — I suppose fearing its 
meaning. 

Rene made approaches to his neighbor’s 
friendship soon after that night. He was but 
an art student, the son of a poor mountaineer, 
and with scarce a thing he could call his own 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


32 

except an easel of deal, a few plaster casts, and 
a bed of straw. She was but a working-girl, 
born of Breton peasants, and owning as her sole 
treasures two silver ear-rings and a white rose. 

But for all that, no courtship could have been 
more reverential on the one side or fuller of 
modest grace on the other if the scene of it had 
been a palace of princes or a chateau of the 
nobles. 

He spoke very little. 

The vine had said that at the club round the 
corner he was very eloquent, with all the im- 
passioned and fierce eloquence common to men 
of the south. But with Lili he was almost 
mute. The vine, who knew human nature well 
— as vines always do, since their juices unlock 
the secret thoughts of men and bring to day- 
light their darkest passions — the vine said that 
such silence in one by nature eloquent showed 
the force of his love and its delicacy. 

This may be so : I hardly know. My lover 
the wind, when he is amorous, is loud; but then 
it is true his loves are not often very constant. 

Rene chiefly wooed her by gentle service. 
He brought her little lovely wild flowers, for 
which he ransacked the woods of St. Germains 
and Meudon. He carried the billets of her fire- 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


33 


wood up the seven long, twisting, dirty flights 
of stairs. He fought for her with the wicked 
old porteress at the door downstairs. He 
played to her in the gray of the evening on a 
quaint, simple flute, a relic of his boyhood, the 
sad, wild, touching airs of his own southern 
mountains — played at his open window while 
the lamps burned through the dusk, till the 
people listened at their doors and ' casements 
and gathered in groups in the passage below, 
and said to one another, “How clever he is ! — 
and he starves.” 

He did starve very often, or at least he had 
to teach himself to keep down hunger with a 
morsel of black chaff-bread and a stray roll of 
tobacco. And yet I could see that he had be- 
come happy. 

Lili never asked him within her door. All 
the words they exchanged were from their open 
lattices, with the space of the roadway between 
them. 

I heard every syllable they spoke, and they 
were on the one side most innocent and on the 
other most reverential. Ay, though you may 
not believe it — you who know the people of 
Paris from the travesties of theatres and the 
slanders of salons. 


34 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


And all this time secretly he worked on at 
her portrait. He worked out of my sight and 
hers, in the inner part of his garret, but the 
swallows saw and told me. There are never 
any secrets between birds and flowers. 

We used to live in Paradise together, and we 
love one another as exiles do ; and we hold in 
our cups the raindrops to slake the thirst of the 
birds, and the birds in return bring to us from 
many lands and over many waters tidings of 
those lost ones who have been torn from us to 
strike the roots of our race in far-off soils and 
under distant suns. 

Late in the summer of the year, one won- 
derful fete-day, Lili did for once get out to 
the woods, the old kindly green woods of Vin- 
cennes. 

A neighbor on a lower floor, a woman who 
made poor, scentless, senseless, miserable imita- 
tions of all my race in paper, sat with the old 
bedridden grandmother while Lili took her 
holiday — so rare in her life, though she was 
one of the motes in the bright champagne of the 
dancing air of Paris. I missed her sorely on 
each of those few sparse days of her absence, 
but for her I rejoiced. 

“ Je reste: tu ’ fen vas,” says the rose to the 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 35 

butterfly in the poem ; and I said so in my 
thoughts to her. 

She went to the broad level grass, to the 
golden fields of the sunshine, to the sound of 
the bees murmuring over the wild purple 
thyme, to the sight of the great snowy clouds 
slowly sailing over the sweet blue freedom of 
heaven — to all the things of my birthright 
and my deathless remembrance — all that no 
woman can love as a rose can love them. 

But I was not jealous ; nay, not though she 
had cramped me in a little earth-bound cell of 
clay. I envied wistfully indeed, as I envied the 
swallows their wings which cleft the air, asking 
no man’s leave for their liberty. But I would 
not have maimed a swallow’s pinion had I had 
the power, and I would not have abridged an 
hour of Lili’s freedom. Flowers are like your 
poets: they give ungrudgingly, and, like all 
lavish givers, are seldom recompensed in kind. 

We cast all our world of blossom, all our 
treasury of fragrance, at the feet of the one we 
love ; and then, having spent ourselves in that 
too abundant sacrifice, you cry, “ A yellow, 
faded thing! — to the dust-hole with it! ” and 
root us up violently and fling us to rot with the 
refuse and offal ; not remembering the days 


36 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


when our burden of beauty made sunlight in 
your darkest places, and brought the odors of a 
lost paradise to breathe over your bed of fever. 

Well, there is one consolation. Just so like- 
wise do you deal with your human wonder- 
flower of genius. 

Lili went for her day in the green midsummer 
world — she and a little blithe, happy-hearted 
group of young work-people — and I stayed in 
the garret window, hot and thirsty, and droop- 
ing and pale, choked by the dust that drifted 
up from the pavement, and hearing little all 
day long save the quarrels of the sparrows and 
the whir of the engine wheels in a baking- 
house close at hand. 

For it was some great day or other, when all 
Paris was out en fete , and every one was away 
from his or her home, except such people as 
the old bedridden woman and the cripple who 
watched her. So, at least, the white roof- 
pigeons told me, who flew where they listed, 
and saw the whole splendid city beneath them 
— saw all its glistening of arms and its sheen 
of palace roofs, all its gilded domes and its 
white, wide squares, all its crowds, many-hued 
as a field of tulips, and its flashing eagles golden 
as the sun. 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


37 


When I had been alone two hours, and whilst 
the old building was silent and empty, there 
came across the street from his own dwelling- 
place the artist Rene, with a parcel beneath his 
arm. 

He came up the stairs with a light, noiseless 
step, and pushed open the door of our attic. 
He paused on the threshold a moment, with the 
sort of reverent, hushed look on his face that 
I had seen on the faces of one or two swarthy, 
bearded, scarred soldiers as they paused before 
the picinas at the door of the little chapel which 
stood in my sight on the other side of our 
street. 

Then he entered, placed that which he carried 
on a wooden chair fronting the light, uncovered 
it, and went quietly out again, without the 
women in the inner closet hearing him. 

What he had brought was the canvas I had 
seen grow under his hand, the painting of me 
and the lamp and Lili. I do not doubt how he 
had done it; it was surely the little attic win- 
dow, homely and true in likeness, and yet he had 
glorified us all, and so framed in my leaves and 
my white flowers, the low oil flame and the fair 
head of my mistress, that there was that in the 
little picture which made me tremble and yet 


38 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


be glad. On a slender slip of paper attached 
to it there was written, “ II n'y a pas de nuit 
sans etoile .” 

Of him I saw no more. The picture kept 
me silent company all the day. 

At evening Lili came. It was late. She 
brought with her a sweet, cool perfume of dewy 
mosses and fresh leaves and strawberry plants 
— sweet as honey. She came in with a dark, 
dreamy brilliance in her eyes and long coils of 
foliage in her hands. 

She brought to the canary chickweed and a 
leaf of lettuce. She kissed me and laid wet 
mosses on my parching roots, and fanned me 
with the breath of her fresh lips. She took to 
the old women within a huge cabbage leaf full 
of cherries, having, I doubt not, gone herself 
without in order to bring the ruddy fruit to 
them. 

She had been happy, but she was very quiet. 
To those who love the country as she and I 
did, and, thus loving it, have to dwell in cities, 
there is as much of pain, perhaps, as of pleasure 
in a fleeting glimpse of the lost heaven. 

She was tired, and sat for a while, and did 
not see the painting, for it was dusk. She only 
saw it when she rose and turned to light 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


39 


the lamp ; then, with a little shrill cry, she 
fell on her knees before it in her wonder and 
her awe, and laughed and sobbed a little, and 
then was still again, looking at this likeness of 
herself. 

The written words took her long to spell out, 
for she could scarcely read, but when she had 



mastered them, her head sank on her breast 
with a flush and a smile, like the glow of the 
dawn over Provence, I thought. 

She knew whence it came, no doubt, though 


4 o 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


there were many artists and students of art in 
that street. 

But then there was only one who had watched 
her night after night as men watched the stars 
of old to read their fates in the heavens. 

Lili was only a young oavnere, she was only 
a girl of the people : she had quick emotions 
and innocent impulses; she had led her life 
straightly because it was her nature, as it is 
of the lilies — her namesakes, my cousins — to 
grow straight to the light, pure and spotless. 
But she was of the populace ; she was frank, 
fearless, and strong, despite all her dreams. She 
was glad, and she sought not to hide it. With 
a gracious impulse of gratitude she turned to 
the lattice and leaned past me, and looked for 
my neighbor. 

He was there in the gloom ; he strove not 
to be seen, but a stray ray from a lamp at the 
vintner’s gleamed on his handsome dark face, 
lean and pallid and yearning and sad, but full 
of force and of soul like a head of Rembrandt’s. 
Lili stretched her hands to him with a noble, 
candid gesture and a sweet, tremulous laugh : 
“What you have given me! — it is you? — it 
is you ? ” 

“Mademoiselle forgives?” he murmured, 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


41 


leaning as far out as the gable would per- 
mit. The street was still deserted, and very 
quiet. The theatres were all open to the 
people that night free, and bursts of music 
from many quarters rolled in through the sultry 
darkness. 

Lili colored over all her fair, pale face, even 
as I have seen my sisters’ white breasts glow to 
a wondrous, wavering warmth as the sun of the 
west kissed them. She drew her breath with a 
quick sigh. She did not answer him in words, 
but with a sudden movement of exquisite elo- 
quence she broke from me my fairest and my 
last-born blossom and threw it from her lattice 
into his. 

Then, as he caught it, she closed the lattice 
with a swift, trembling hand, and left the cham- 
ber dark, and fled to the little sleeping-closet 
where her crucifix and her mother’s rosary hung 
together above her bed. 

As for me, I was left bereaved and bleeding. 
The dew which waters the growth of your 
human love is usually the tears or blood of 
some martyred life. 

I loved Lili. 

I prayed, as my torn stem quivered and my 
fairest begotten sank to her death in the night 


42 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


and the silence, that I might be the first and 
the last to suffer from the human love born that 
night. 

I, a rose — Love’s flower. 



A PROVENCE ROSE. 


43 



PART SECOND. 


Now, before that summer was gone, these 
two were betrothed to one another, and my 
little fair dead daughter, all faded and scentless 
though her half-opened leaves were, remained 
always on Rene’s heart as a tender and treas- 
ured relic. 

They were betrothed, I say — not wedded, 
for they were so terribly poor. 

Many a day he, I think, had not so much as 
a crust to eat ; and there passed many weeks 
when the works on his canvas stood unfinished 
because he had not wherewithal to buy the oils 
and the colors to finish them. 



44 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


Rene was frightfully poor, indeed ; but then, 
being an artist and a poet, and the lover of 
a fair and noble woman, and a dreamer of 
dreams, and a man God-gifted, he was no 
longer wretched. For the life of a painter is 
beautiful when he is still young, and loves truly, 
and has a genius in him stronger than all ca- 
lamity, and hears a voice in which he believes 
say always in his ear: “Fear nothing. Men 
must believe as I do in thee, one day. And 
meanwhile we can wait ! ” And a painter in 
Paris, even though he starve on a few sous a 
day, can have so much that is lovely and full 
of picturesque charm in his daily pursuits : the 
long, wondrous galleries full of the arts he 
adores; the “ realite de V ideal” around him in 
that perfect world ; the slow, sweet, studious 
hours in the calm wherein all that is great 
in humanity alone survives; the trance — half 
adoration, half aspiration, at once desire and 
despair — before the face of the Mona Lisa; 
then, without, the streets so glad and so gay in 
the sweet, living sunshine ; the quiver of green 
leaves among gilded balconies ; the groups at 
every turn about the doors ; the glow of color in 
market-place and peopled square ; the quaint 
gray piles in old historic ways ; the stones, from 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


45 


every one of which some voice from the imper- 
ishable Past cries out; the green, silent woods, 
the little leafy villages, the winding waters 
garden-girt; the forest heights, with the city 
gleaming and golden in the plain; — all these 
are his. With these — and youth — who shall 
dare say he is not rich — ay, though his board 
be empty and his cup be dry? 

I had not loved Paris — I, a little imprisoned 
rose, caged in a clay pot, and seeing nothing 
but the sky-line of the roofs. But I grew to 
love it, hearing from Rene and from Lili of all 
the poetry and gladness that Paris made pos- 
sible in their young and burdened lives, and 
which could have been thus possible in no 
other city of the earth. 

City of Pleasure you have called her, and 
with truth ; but why not also City of the 
Poor? for that city, like herself, has remem- 
bered the poor in her pleasure, and given to 
them, no less than to the richest, the treasure of 
her laughing sunlight, of her melodious music, 
of her gracious hues, of her million flowers, of 
her shady leaves, of her divine ideals. 

O world ! when you let Paris die you will let 
your last youth die with her ! Your rich will 
mourn a paradise deserted, but your poor will 


46 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


have need to weep with tears of blood for the 
ruin of the sole Eden whose sunlight sought 
them in their shadow, whose music found them 
in their loneliness, whose glad green ways were 
open to their tired feet, whose radiance smiled 
the sorrow from their aching eyes, and in whose 
wildest errors and whose vainest dreams their 
woes and needs were unforgotten. 

Well, this little, humble love-idyl, which 
grew into being in an attic, had a tender grace 
of its own ; and I watched it with tenderness, 
and it seemed to me fresh as the dews of the 
morning in the midst of the hot, stifling world. 

They could not marry : he had nothing but 
famine for his wedding-gift, and all the little 
that she made was taken for the food and wine 
of the bedridden old grandam in that religious 
execution of a filial duty which is so habitual 
in the French family-life that no one dreams 
counting it as a virtue. 

But they spent their leisure time together: 
they passed their rare holiday hours in each 
other’s society in the woods which they both 
loved or in the public galleries of art; and 
when the autumn came on apace, and they 
could no longer sit at their open casements, he 
still watched the gleam of her pale lamp as a 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


47 


pilgrim the light of a shrine, and she, ere she 
went to her rest, would push ajar the closed 
shutter and put her pretty fair head into the 
darkling night, and waft him a gentle good- 
night, and then go and kneel down by her bed 
and pray for him and his future before the 
cross which had been her dead mother’s. 

On that bright summer a hard winter fol- 
lowed. The poor suffered very much ; and I 
in the closed lattice knew scarcely which was 
the worse — the icy, shivering chills of the 
snow-burdened air, or the close, noxious suf- 
focation of the stove. 

I was very sickly and ill, and cared little for 
my life during that bitter cold weather, when 
the panes of the lattice were all blocked from 
week’s end to week’s end with the solid, silvery 
foliage of the frost. 

Rene and Lili both suffered greatly: he 
could only keep warmth in his veins by the 
stoves of the public libraries, and she lost her 
work in the box trade after the New Year fairs, 
and had to eke out as best she might the few 
francs she had been able to lay back in the 
old brown pipkin in the closet. She had, more- 
over, to sell most of the little things in her gar- 
ret; her own mattress went, though she kept 


48 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


the bed under her grandmother. But there 
were two things she would not sell, though for 
both was she offered money ; they were her 
mother’s reliques and myself. 

She would not, I am sure, have sold the pic- 
ture, either. But for that no one offered her a 
centime. 

One day, as the last of the winter solstice was 
passing away, the old woman died. 

Lili wept for her sincere and tender tears, 
though never in my time, nor in any other, I 
believe, had the poor old querulous, paralytic 
sufferer rewarded her with anything except 
lamentation and peevish discontent. 

“Now you will come to me? ” murmured her 
lover, when they had returned from laying the 
old dead peasant in the quarter of the poor. 

Lili drooped her head softly upon his breast. 

“ If you wish it ! ” she whispered, with a whis- 
per as soft as the first low breath of summer. 

If he wished it ! 

A gleam of pale gold sunshine shone through 
the dulled panes upon my feeble branches; 
a little timid fly crept out and spread its wings ; 
the bells of the church rang an angelus; a child 
laughed in the street below; there came a smile 
of greenness spreading over the boughs of leaf- 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


49 


less trees; my lover, the wind, returned from 
the south, fresh from desert and ocean, with the 
scent of the spice groves and palm aisles of the 
East in his breath, and, softly unclosing my lat- 
tice, murmured to me: “ Didst thou think I was 
faithless? See, I come with the spring! ” 

So, though I was captive and they two were 
poor, yet we three were all happy ; for love 
and a new year of promise were with us. 

I bore a little snowy blossom (sister to the 
one which slept lifeless on Rene’s heart) that 
spring, whilst yet the swallows were not back 
from the African gardens, and the first violets 
were carried in millions through the streets — 
the only innocent imperialists that the world 
has ever seen. 

That little winter-begotten darling of mine was 
to be Lili’s nuptial-flower. She took it so ten- 
derly from me that it hardly seemed like its death. 

“ My little dear rose, who blossoms for me, 
though I can only cage her in clay, and only 
let her see the sun’s rays between the stacks of 
the chimneys ! ” she said softly over me as she 
kissed me ; and when she said that, could I any 
more grieve for Provence? 

“ What do they wed upon, those two? ” said 
the old vine to me. 


50 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


And I answered him, “ Hope and dreams.” 

“Will those bake bread and feed babes?” 
said the vine, as he shook his wrinkled tendrils 
despondently in the March air. 

We did not ask in the attic. 

Summer was nigh at hand, and we loved one 
another. 

Rene had come to us — we had not gone to 
him. For our garret was on the sunny, his on 
the dark, side of the street, and Lili feared the 
gloom for me and the bird ; and she could not 
bring herself to leave that old red-leaved 
creeper who had wound himself so close about 
the rainpipe and the roof, and who could not 
have been dislodged without being slain. 

With the Mardi Gras her trade had returned 
to her. Rene, unable to prosecute his grand 
works, took many of the little boxes in his own 
hands, and wrought on them with all the name- 
less mystical charm and the exquisite grace of 
touch which belong to the man who is by 
nature a great artist. The little trade could 
not at its best price bring much, but it brought 
bread ; and we were happy. 

While he worked at the box lids she had 
leisure for her household labors ; when these 
were done she would draw out her mother’s old 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


51 


Breton distaff, and would sit and spin. When 
twilight fell they would go forth together to 
dream under the dewy avenues and the glisten- 
ing stars, or as often would wait within whilst 
he played on his mountain flute to the people 
at the doorways in the street below. 

“ Is it better to go out and see the stars and 
the leaves ourselves, or to stay indoors and make 
all these forget the misfortune of not seeing 
them?” said Lili on one of those evenings when 
the warmth and the sunset almost allured her to 
draw the flute from her husband’s hands and give 
him his hat instead ; and then she looked down 
into the narrow road, at the opposite houses, at 
the sewing-girls stitching by their little win- 
dows, at the pale students studying their sickly 
lore with scalpel and with skeleton, at the hot, 
dusty little children at play on the asphalt 
sidewalk, at the sorrowful, darkened casements 
behind which she knew beds of sickness or of 
paralyzed old age were hidden — looked at all 
this from behind my blossoms, and then gave 
up the open air and the evening stroll that 
were so dear a pastime to her, and whispered 
to Rene, “ Play, or they will be disappointed.” 

And he played, instead of going to the de- 
bating-club in the room round the corner. 


52 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


“ He has ceased to be a patriot,” grumbled 
the old vine. “ It is always so with every man 
when once he has loved a woman ! ” 

Myself, I could not see that there was less 
patriotism in breathing the poetry of sound 
into the ears of his neighbors than in rousing 
the passions of hell in the breasts of his 
brethren. 

But perhaps this was my ignorance : I be- 
lieve that of late years people have grown to 
hold that the only pure patriotism is, and ought 
to be, evinced in the most intense and the most 
brutalized form of one passion, — “ Envy, eldest- 
born of hell.” 

So these two did some good, and were happy, 
though more than once it chanced to them to 
have to go a whole day without tasting food of 
any sort. 

I have said that Rene had genius, — a gen- 
ius bold, true, impassioned, masterful, — such a 
genius as colors the smallest trifles that it 
touches. Rene could no more help putting an 
ideal grace into those little sweetmeat boxes — 
which sold at their very highest, in the booths 
of the fairs, at fifty centimes apiece — than we, 
the roses, can help being fragrant and fair. 

Genius has a way of casting its pearls in the 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


53 


dust as we scatter our fragrance to every breeze 
that blows. Now and then the pearl is caught 
and treasured, as now and then some solitary 
creature pauses to smell the sweetness of the 
air in which we grow, and thanks the God who 
made us. 

But as ninety-nine roses bloom unthanked 
for one that is thus remembered, so ninety-nine 
of the pearls of genius are trodden to pieces 
for one that is set on high and crowned with 
honor. 

In the twilight of a dull day a little, feeble, 
brown old man climbed the staircase and en- 
tered our attic with shambling step. 

We had no strangers to visit us : who visits 
the poor? We thought he was an enemy: the 
poor always do think so, being so little used to 
strangers. 

Rene drew himself erect, and strove to hide 
the poverty of his garments, standing by his 
easel. Lili came to me and played with my 
leaves in her tender, caressing fashion. 

“You painted this, M. Rene Claude?” asked 
the little brown old man. He held in his hand 
one of the bonbon boxes, the prettiest of them 
all, with a tambourine-girl dancing in a wreath 
of Provence roses. Rene had copied me with 


54 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


loving fidelity in the flowers, and with a sigh 
had murmured as he cast the box aside when 
finished : “ That ought to fetch at least a 

franc!” But he got no more than the usual 
two sous for it. 

The little man sat down on the chair which 
Lili placed for him. 

“ So they told me where I bought this. It 
was at a booth at St. Cloud. Do you know 
that it is charming? ” 

Rene smiled a little sadly; Lili flushed with 
joy. It was the first praise which she had ever 
heard given to him. 

“ You have a great talent,” pursued the little 
man. 

Rene bowed his handsome, haggard face — 
his mouth quivered a very little : for the first 
time Hope entered into him. 

“Genius, indeed,” said the stranger; and he 
sauntered a little about and looked at the can- 
vases, and wondered and praised, and said not 
very much, but said that little so well and so 
judiciously that it was easy to see he was no 
mean judge of art, and possibly no slender 
patron of it. 

As Lili stood by me I saw her color come 
and go and her breast heave. I too trembled 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 55 

in all my leaves : were recognition and the 
world’s homage coming to Rene at last? 

“ And I have been so afraid always that I 
had injured, burdened him, clogged his strength 
in that endless strife ! ” she murmured below 
her breath. “ O dear little rose ! if only the 
world can but know his greatness ! ” 

Meanwhile the old man looked through the 
sketches and studies with which the room was 
strewed. “You do not finish your things? ” he 
said abruptly. 

Rene flushed darkly. “ Oil pictures cost 
money,” he said briefly, “ and — I am very 
poor.” 

Though a peasant’s son, he was very proud : 
the utterance must have cost him much. 

The stranger took snuff. “ You are a man 
of singular genius,” he said simply. “You 
only want to be known to get the prices of 
Meissonier.” 

Meissonier ! — the Rothschild of the studios, 
the artist whose six- inch canvas would bring 
the gold value of a Raphael or a Titian ! 

Lili, breathing fast, and white as death with 
ecstasy, made the sign of the cross on her 
breast ; the delicate brown hand of Rene shook 
where it leaned on his easel. 


5 $ 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


They were both silent — silent from the in- 
tensity of their hope. 

“Do you know who I am?” the old man 
pursued with a cordial smile. 

“ I have not that honor,” murmured Rene. 

The stranger, taking his snuff out of a gold 
box, named a name at which the painter started. 
It was that of one of the greatest art dealers in 
the whole of Europe, — one who at a word 
could make or mar an artist’s reputation, — one 
whose accuracy of judgment was considered 
infallible by all connoisseurs, and the passport 
to whose galleries was to any unknown paint- 
ing a certain passport also to the fame of men. 

“You are a man of singular genius,” repeated 
the great purchaser, taking his snuff in the mid- 
dle of the little bare chamber. “It is curious 
— one always finds genius either in a cellar or 
in an attic : it never, by any chance, is to be 
discovered midway on the stairs — never in the 
mezzo terzo! But to the point. You have 
great delicacy of touch, striking originality, a 
wonderful purity yet bloom in your color, and 
an exquisite finish of minutiae, without any weak- 
ness, — a combination rare, very rare. That 
girl yonder, feeding white pigeons on the leads 
of a roof, with an atom of blue sky, and a few 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


57 


vine leaves straying over the parapet — that is 
perfectly conceived. Finished it must be. So 
must that little study of the beggar-boy looking 
through the gilded gates into the rose-gardens 
— it is charming, charming. Your price for 
those?” 

Rene’s colorless, worn young face colored to 
the brows. “ Monsieur is too good,” he mut- 
tered brokenly. “ A nameless artist has no 
price, except — ” 

“ Honor,” murmured Lili as she moved for- 
ward with throbbing heart and dim eyes. “Ah, 
monsieur, give him a name in Paris ! We want 
nothing else — nothing else ! ” 

“ Poor fools ! ” said the dealer to his snufif-box. 
I heard him — they did not. 

“ Madame,” he answered aloud, “ Paris her- 
self will give him that the first day his first can- 
vas hangs in my galleries. Meanwhile, I must 
in honesty be permitted to add something more. 
For each of those little canvases, the girl on the 
roof and the boy at the gate, I will give you now 
two thousand francs, and two thousand more 
when they shall be completed. Provided — ” 

He paused and glanced musingly at Rene. 

Lili had turned away, and was sobbing for 
very joy at this undreamed-of deliverance. 


58 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


Rene stood quite still, with his hands crossed 
on the easel and his head bent on his chest. 
The room, I think, swam around him. 

The old man sauntered again a little about 
the place, looking here and looking there, 
murmuring certain artistic disquisitions tech- 
nical and scientific, leaving them time to recover 
from the intensity of their emotion. 

What a noble thing old age was, I thought, 
living only to give hope to the young in their 
sorrow, and to release captive talents from the 
prison of obscurity ! We should leave the little 
room in the roof, and dwell in some bright quar- 
ter where it was all leaves and flowers; and 
Rene would be great, and go to dine with 
princes and drive a team of belled horses, like a 
famous painter who had dashed once with his 
splendid equipage through our narrow passage ; 
and we should see the sky always — as much of 
it as ever we chose ; and Lili would have a gar- 
den of her own, all grass and foliage and falling 
waters, in which I should live in the open air all 
the day long, and make believe that I was in 
Provence. 

My dreams and my fancies were broken by the 
sound of the old man’s voice taking up the thread 
of his discourse once more in front of Rene. 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


59 


“I will give you four thousand francs each 
for those two little canvases,” he repeated. “ It 
is a mere pinch of dust to what you will make 
in six months’ time if — if — you hear me? — 
your name is brought before the public of Paris 
in my galleries and under my auspices. I sup- 
pose you have heard something of what I can 
do, eh? Well, all I can do I will do for you; 
for you have a great talent, and without intro- 
duction, my friend, you may as well roll up 
your pictures and burn them in your stove to 
save charcoal. You know that?” 

Rene indeed knew — none better. Lili turned 
on the old man her sweet, frank Breton eyes, 
smiling their radiant gratitude through ten- 
derest tears. 

“The saints will reward you, monsieur, 
in a better world than this,” she murmured 
softly. 

The old man took snuff a little nervously. 
“There is one condition I must make,” he said 
with a trifling hesitation — “one only.” 

“ Ask of my gratitude what you will,” an- 
swered Rene quickly, while he drew a deep 
breath of relief and freedom, — the breath of 
one who casts to the ground the weight of a 
deadly burden. 


6o 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


“ It is, that you will bind yourself only to 
paint for me.” 

“ Certainly ! ” Rene gave the assent with 
eagerness. Poor fellow ! it was a novelty so 
exquisite to have any one save the rats to paint 
for. It had never dawned upon his thoughts 
that when he stretched his hands out with such 
passionate desire to touch the hem of the gar- 
ment of Fortune and catch the gleam of the 
laurels of Fame, he might be in truth only hold- 
ing them out to fresh fetters. 

“Very well,” said the old man quietly, and 
he sat down again and looked full in Rene’s 
face, and unfolded his views for the artist’s fu- 
ture. 

He used many words, and was slow and suave 
in their utterance, and paused often and long 
to take out his heavy gold box ; but he spoke 
well. Little by little his meaning gleamed out 
from the folds of verbiage in which he skilfully 
enwrapped it. 

It was this. 

The little valueless drawings on the people’s 
sweetmeat boxes of gilded cardboard had a 
grace, a color, and a beauty in them which had 
caught, at a fair-booth in the village of St. 
Cloud, the ever-watchful eyes of the great 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


6 1 


dealer. He had bought half a dozen of the 
boxes for a couple of francs. He had said, 
“ Here is what I want.” Wanted for what? 
Briefly, to produce Petitot enamels and Frago- 
nard cabinets — genuine eighteenth - century 
work. There was a rage for it. Rene would 
understand? 

Rene’s dark southern eyes lost a little of their 
new lustre of happiness, and grew troubled with 
a sort of cloud of perplexity. He did not seem 
to understand. 

The old man took more snuff, and used 
phrases clearer still. 

There were great collectors — dilettanti of 
houses imperial and royal and princely and 
noble, of all the grades of greatness — who 
would give any sum for bonbonnieres and taba- 
tieres of eighteenth-century work by any one of 
the few famous masters of that time. A gen- 
uine, incontestable sweetmeat box from the at- 
eliers of the Louis XIV. or Louis XV. period 
would fetch almost a fabulous sum. Then again 
he paused, doubtfully. 

Rene bowed, and his wondering glance said 
without words, “ I know this. But I have no 
eighteenth-century work to sell you : if I had, 
should we starve in an attic? ” 


62 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


His patron coughed a little, looked at Li 
then proceeded to explain yet further. 

In Rene’s talent he had discerned the hues, 
the grace, the delicacy yet brilliancy, the vo- 
luptuousness and the desinvolteure of the best 
eighteenth-century work. Rene doubtless did 
other and higher things which pleased himself 
far more than these airy trifles. Well, let hi~» 
pursue the greater line of art if he chose ; b. 
he, the old man who spoke, could assure him 
that nothing would be so lucrative to him as 
those bacchantes in wreaths of roses and young 
tambourine-players gorge au vent dancing in a 
bed of violets, and beautiful marquises, powdered 
and jewelled, looking over their fans, which he 
had painted for those poor little two-sous boxes 
of the populace, and the like of which, exquis- 
itely finished on enamel or ivory, set in gold 
and tortoise-shell rimmed with pearls and tur- 
quoises or opals and diamonds, would deceive 
the finest connoisseur in Europe into receiving 
them as — whatever they might be signed and 
dated. 

If Rene would do one or two of these at dic- 
tation in a year, not more, — more would be 
perilous, — paint and sign them and produce 
them with any touches that might be com- 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


63 


.handed ; never ask what became of them when 
finished, nor recognize them if hereafter he 
might see them in any illustrious collection — 
if Rene would bind himself to do this, he, the 
old man who spoke, would buy his other paint- 
ings, place them well in his famous galleries, 
and, using all his influence, would make him in 

twelvemonth’s time the most celebrated of 
-id the young painters of Paris. 

It was a bargain? Ah, how well it was, he 
said, to put the best of one’s powers into the 
most trifling things one did ! If that poor little 
two-sous box had been less lavishly and grace- 
fully decorated, it would never have arrested 
his eyes in the bonbon-booth at St. Cloud. 
The old man paused to take snuff and receive 
an answer. 

Rene stood motionless. 

Lili had sunk into a seat, and was gazing at 
the tempter with wide-open, puzzled, startled 
eyes. Both were silent. 

“It is a bargain?” said the old man again. 
“ Understand me, M. Rene Claude. You have 
no risk, absolutely none, and you have the cer- 
tainty of fair fame and fine fortune in the space 
of a few years. You will be a great man before 
you have a gray hair : that comes to very few. 


6 4 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


I shall not trouble you for more than two dix- 
huitieme siecle enamels in the year — perhaps 
for only one. You can spend ten months out 
of the twelve on your own canvases, making 
your own name and your own wealth as swiftly 
as your ambition and impatience can desire. 
Madame here,” said the acute dealer with a 
pleasant smile — “Madame here can have a 
garden sloping on the Seine and a glass house 
of choicest flowers — which I see are her grace- 
fulweakness — ere another rose-season has time 
to come round, if you choose.” 

His voice lingered softly on the three last 
words. 

The dew stood on Rene’s forehead, his hands 
clenched on the easel. 

“You wish me — to — paint — forgeries of the 
Petitot enamels? ” 

The old man smiled unmoved : “ Chut, chut ! 
Will you paint me little boutonnieres on en- 
amel instead of on cardboard? That is all 
the question. I have said where they go, how 
they are set : what they are called shall be my 
affair. You know nothing. The only works of 
yours which you will be concerned to acknowl- 
edge will be your own canvas pictures. What 
harm can it do any creature? You will gratify 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


65 


a connoisseur or two innocently, and you will 
meanwhile be at leisure to follow the bent of 
your own genius, which otherwise — ” 

He paused : I heard the loud throbs of 
Rene’s heart under that cruel temptation. 

Lili gazed at his tempter with the same star- 
tled terror and bewilderment still dilating her 
candid eyes with a woful pain. 

“ Otherwise,” pursued the old man with mer- 
ciless tranquillity, “you will never see me any 
more, my friends. If you try to repeat any 
story to my hindrance, no one will credit you. 
I am rich, you are poor. You have a great 
talent: I shall regret to see it lost, but I shall 
let it die — so.” 

And he trod very gently on a little gnat that 
crawled near his foot, and killed it. 

A terrible agony gathered in the artist’s face. 

“ O God ! ” he cried in his torture, and his 
eyes went to the canvases against the wall, and 
then to the face of his wife, with an unutter- 
able, yearning desire. 

For them, for them , this sin which tempted 
him looked virtue. 

“Do you hesitate?” said the merciless old 
man. “Pshaw! whom do you hurt? You 
give me work as good as that which you imitate, 


66 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


and I call it only by a dead man’s name : who 
is injured? What harm can there be in humor- 
ing the fanaticism of fashion? Choose — I am 
in haste.” 

Rene hid his face with his hands, so that he 
should not behold those dear creations of his 
genius which so cruelly, so innocently, assailed 
him with a temptation beyond his strength. 

“ Choose for me — you ! ” he muttered in his 
agony to Lili. 

Lili, white as death, drew closer to him. 

“ My Rene, your heart has chosen,” she mur- 
mured through her dry, quivering lips. “You 
cannot buy honor by fraud.” 

Rene lifted his head and looked straight in 
the eyes of the man who held the scales of his 
fate, and could weigh out for his whole life’s 
portion either fame and fortune, or obscurity 
and famine. 

“ Sir,” he said slowly, with a bitter, tranquil 
smile about his mouth, “ my garret is empty, 
but it is clean. May I trouble you to leave it 
as you found it? ” 

So they were strong to the end, these two 
famished children of frivolous Paris. 

But when the door had closed and shut their 
tempter out, the revulsion came : they wept 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


6 ; 


those tears of blood which come from the hearts’ 
depths of those who have seen Hope mock them 
with a smile a moment, to leave them face to 
face with Death. 

“ Poor fools ! ” sighed the old vine from his 
corner in the gray, dull twilight of the late 
autumn day. 

Was the vine right? 

The air which he had breathed for fifty years 
through all his dust-choked leaves and tendrils 
had been the air off millions of human lungs, 
corrupted in its passage through millions of 
human lips ; and the thoughts which he thought 
were those of human wisdom. 

The sad day died ; the night fell ; the lattice 
was closed ; the flute lay untouched. A great 
misery seemed to enfold us. True, we were no 
worse off than we had been when the same day 
dawned. But that is the especial cruelty of 
every tempter always : he touches the innocent, 
closed eyes of his victims with a collyrium 
which makes the happy blindness of content 
no longer possible. If strong to resist him, he 
has still his vengeance, for they are never again 
at peace as they were before that fatal hour in 
which he showed them all that they were not, 
all that they might be. 


68 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


Our stove was not more chill, our garret 
not more empty; our darkness not more dark 
amidst the gay, glad, dazzling city ; our dusky 
roof and looming crown that shut the sky out 
from us not more gloomy and impenetrable 
than they had been on all those other earlier 
nights when yet we had been happy. Yet how 
intensified million-fold seemed cold and loneli- 
ness and poverty and darkness, all ! — for we 
had for the first time known what it was to think 
of riches, of fame, of homage, of light, as possi- 
ble , and then to lose them all forever ! 

I had been resigned for love’s sake to dwell 
amongst the roofs, seeing not the faces of the 
stars, nor feeling ever the full glory of the sun ; 
but now — I had dreamed of the fair freedom 
of garden-ways and the endless light of summer 
suns on palace terraces, and I drooped and 
shivered and sickened, and was twice captive 
and twice exiled, and knew that I was a little 
nameless, worthless, hapless thing, whose fairest 
chaplet of blossom no hand would ever gather 
for a crown. 

As with my life, so was it likewise with theirs. 

They had been so poor, but they had been 
so happy: the poverty remained, the joy had 
flown. 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 69 

The winter was again very hard, very cold : 
they suffered greatly. 

They could scarcely keep together body and 
soul, as your strange phrase runs; they went 
without food sometimes for days and days, and 
fuel they had scarcely ever. 

The bird in his cage was sold ; they would 
not keep the little golden singing thing to starve 
to silence like themselves. 

, As for me, I nearly perished of the cold ; 
only the love I bore to Lili kept a little life in 
my leafless branches. 

All that cruel winter-time they were strong 
still, those children of Paris. 

For they sought no alms, and in their utter- 
most extremity neither of them ever whispered 
to the other: “Go seek the tempter; repent, 
be wise. Give not up our lives for a mere 
phantasy of honor.” 

“ When the snow is on the ground, and the 
canvases have to burn in the stove, then you 
will change your minds and come to me on 
your knees,” the old wicked, foul spirit had said 
mocking them, as he had opened the door of 
the attic and passed away creaking down the 
dark stairs. 

And I suppose he had reckoned on this; but 


70 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


if he had done so, he had reckoned without his 
host, as your phrase runs : neither Rene nor Lili 
ever went to him, either on knees or in any 
other wise. 

When the spring came we three were still all 
living — at least their hearts still beat and their 
lips still drew breath, as my boughs were still 
green and my roots still clung to the soil. But 
no more to them or to me did the coming of 
spring bring, as of old, the real living of life, 
which is joy. And my lover the wind wooed 
me no more, and the birds no more brought me 
the rose-whispers of my kindred in Provence. 
For even the little pigeon-hole in the roof had 
become too costly a home for us, and we dwelt 
in a den under the stones of the streets, where 
no light came and scarce a breath of air ever 
strayed to us. 

There the uncompleted canvases, on which 
the painter whom Lili loved had tried to write 
his title to the immortality of fame, were at last 
finished — finished, for the rats ate them. 

All this while we lived — the man whose 
genius and misery were hell on earth ; the 
woman whose very purity and perfectness of 
love were her direst torture ; and I, the little 
white flower born of the sun and the dew, of 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


7 


fragrance and freedom, to whom every moment 
of this blindness, this suffocation, this starvation, 
this stench of putrid odors, this horrible roar of 
the street above, was a moment worse than any 
pang of death. 

Away there in Provence so many a fair rose- 
sister of mine bowed her glad, proud, innocent 
head with anguish and shuddering terrors to the 
sharp summons of the severing knife that cut 
in twain her life, whilst I — I, on and on — was 
forced to keep so much of life as lies in the 
capacity to suffer and to love in vain. 

So much was left to them : no more. 

“Let us compel Death to remember us, since 
even Death forgets us ! ” Rene murmured once 
in his despair to her. 

But Lili had pressed her famished lips to his : 
“ Nay, dear, wait; God will remember us even 
yet, I think.” 

It was her faith. And of her faith she was 
justified at last. 

There came a ghastlier season yet, a time of 
horror insupportable — of ceaseless sound be- 
side which the roar of the mere traffic of the 
streets would have seemed silence — a stench 
beside which the sulphur smoke and the gas 
fumes of a previous time would have been as 


72 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


some sweet, fresh woodland air — a famine beside 
which the daily hunger of the poor was remem- 
bered as the abundance of a feast — a cold 
beside which the chillness of the scant fuel and 
empty braziers of other winters were recalled 
as the warmth of summer — a darkness only 
lit by the red flame of burning houses — a 
solitude only broken by the companionship of 
woe and sickness and despair — a suffocation 
only changed by a rush of air strong with the 
scent of blood, of putridity, of the million liv- 
ing plague-stricken, of the million dead lying 
unburied. 

For there was war. 

Of year or day or hour I knew nothing. It 
was always the same blackness as of night'; the 
same horror of sound, of scent, of cold ; the 
same misery ; the same torture. I suppose 
that the sun was quenched, that the birds were 
dumb, that the winds were stilled forever — that 
all the world was dead ; I do not know. They 
called it War. I suppose that they meant — 
Hell! 

Yet Lili lived, and I ; in that dead darkness 
we had lost Rene — we saw his face no more. 
Yet he could not be in his grave, I knew, for 
Lili, clasping my barren branches to her breast, 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 73 

would murmur : “ Whilst he still lives I will live 
— yes, yes, yes ! ” 

And she did live — so long, so long! — on a 
few draughts of water and a few husks of grain. 

I knew that it was long, for full a hundred 
times she muttered aloud: “Another day? O 
God! — how long? how long?” 

At last in the darkness a human hand was 
stretched to her, once, close beside me. A foul, 
fierce light, the light of flame, was somewhere 
on the air about us, and that moment glowed 
through the horrid gloom we dwelt in in the 
bowels of the earth. I saw the hand and what 
it held to her ; it was a stranger’s, and it held 
the little colorless dead rose, my sweetest blos- 
som, that had lain ever upon Rene’s heart. 

She took it — she who had given it as her 
first love-gift. She was mute. In the glare of 
the flame that quivered through the darkness I 
saw her — standing quite erect and very still. 

The voice of a stranger thrilled through the 
din from the world above. 

“He fought as only patriots can,” it said 
softly and as through tears. “ I was beside 
him. He fell with Regnault in the sortie yes- 
terday. He could not speak ; he had only 


74 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


strength to give me this for you. Be comforted ; 
he has died for Paris." 

On Lili’s face there came once more the 
radiance of a perfect peace, a glory pure and 
endless as the glory of the sun. “ Great in 
death ! " she murmured. “ My love, my love, 
I come ! ” 

I lost her in the darkness. 

I heard a voice above me say that life had 
left her lips as the dead rose touched them. 

What more is there for me to tell? 

I live, since to breathe, and to feel pain, and 
to desire vainly, and to suffer always, are surest 
proofs of life. 

I live, since that stranger’s hand, which 
brought my little dead blossom as the mes- 
sage of farewell, had pity on me and brought 
me away from that living grave. But the pity 
was vain ; I died the only death that had any 
power to hurt me when the human heart I loved 
grew still forever. 

The light of the full day now shines on me ; 
the shadows are cool, the dews are welcome ; 
they speak around me of the coming of spring, 
and in the silence of the dawns I hear from the 
woods without the piping of the nesting birds ; 
but for me the summer can never more return 


A PROVENCE ROSE. 


7 5 


— for me the sun can never again be shining — 
for me the greenest garden world is barren as a 
desert. 

For I am only a little rose, but I am in exile 
and France is desolate. 



sac urn 


COSY CORNER SERIES. 


A Series of Short Original Stories, or Reprints of Well-known 
Favorites, Sketches of Travel, Essays and Poems. 


The books of this series answer a long-felt need for a half- 
hour’s entertaining reading, while in the railway car, during 
the summer outing in the country or at the seaside, or by the 
evening lamp at home. They are particularly adapted for 
reading aloud, containing nothing but the best from a literary 
standpoint, and are unexceptionable in every way. They are 
printed from good type, illustrated with original sketches by 
good artists, and neatly bound in cloth. The size is a i6mo, 
not too large for the pocket. 


PRICE FIFTY CENTS EACH. 

BIG BROTHER. By Annie Fellows- Johnston. 

CHRISTMAS AT THOMPSON HALL. By Anthony 
Trollope. 

STORY OF A SHORT LIFE. By Juliana Horatia 
Ewing. 

A PROVENCE ROSE. By Louisa de la Rame 
(Ouida) . 

RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. By Dr. John Brown. 


Other volumes to follow. 


Published by JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY, Boston. 


410 ?“ A ny of the above works will be sent by mail , postage prepaid , to 
any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


FEATS ON THE FIORD. A tale of Norwegian life, by Harriet 
Martineau. With about 60 original illustrations and a colored 
frontispiece. 

i vol., small quarto, cloth, gilt top $1.50 

This admirable book, read and enjoyed by so many young people a gen- 
eration ago and now partially forgotten, deserves to be brought to the atten- 
tion of parents in search of wholesome reading for their children to-day. it 
is something more than a juvenile book, being really one of the most instruc- 
tive books about Norway and Norwegian life and manners ever written, 
well deserving liberal illustration, and the luxury of good paper, print and 
binding now given to it. 

AN ARCHER WITH COLUMBUS. By Chas. E. Brimblecom, 
with about 50 illustrations from original pen-and-ink sketches. 

1 vol., i6mo, handsome cloth binding $1.25 

A capital story of a boy who attracted the attention of Columbus while he 
was seeking the aid of Ferdinand and Isabella, for his great voyage of dis- 
covery. The wit and courage of the boy enabled him to be of service to the 
great explorer, and he served as an archer on the vessel of Columbus. His 
loyalty and devotion, through vicissitude and danger, endeared him to his 
master, and the story of his experiences and exploits will make him a favor- 
ite with boys, young and old. 

The story is well told, crisply written, full of reasonable adventure and 
lively dialogue, without a tedious page from beginning to end. 

A DOG OF FLANDERS. A Christmas Story. By Louisa de 
la Rame (Ouida). A new edition of a beautiful Christmas story, 
already prized as a classic by all who know it. With forty-two origi- 
nal illustrations and a photogelatine reproduction of Rubens’s great 
picture, “ The Descent from the Cross.” 

1 vol., small quarto, cloth, gilt top $1.50 

THE NURNBERG STOVE. By Louisa de la Rame (^Ouida). 
Another of Ouida’s charming stories, delightful alike to old and young. 
With fifty original illustrations and a color frontispiece of a German 
stove after the celebrated potter, Hirschvogel. 

1 vol., small quarto, cloth, gilt top $1.50 

TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE. By Charles and Mary 
Lamb. New Edition. A pretty edition of this well-known classic. 
Illustrated with twenty etchings by the celebrated French artist, H. 
Pilld. Etched by L. Monzies. 

2 vols., i6mo, half white vellum cloth and silk side, gilt tops . $3.00 

Published by JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY, Boston. 


A ny of the above books will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any 
part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 



























































































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